It was a Marine major's dream. In early September, 1983, I'd had a little more than three months working in Lebanon when my boss at the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), Lieutenant Colonel Jioji Konrote of Fiji, gave me the best order I'd ever received: "Chuck, from this moment on, I want you to do exactly as you please."
I responded as any Marine would to this broad mission order: "Aye, aye, Sir, I'm on my way." Two days later, however, I was hustling to respond to a different instruction: "Major Armstrong, the Israelis are withdrawing from the Chouf. We need you in Naqoura."
A few weeks later, a U.S. Army Special Forces officer and I compared notes about the shift in local forces. What was going on? Here were the dots we tried to connect:
- Until a few days earlier, the chief stabilizing force in Lebanon had been the Israeli Defense Force (IDF);
- Without warning, the IDF had withdrawn from greater Beirut;
- The U.S. Marines were the remaining major stabilizing force;
- Some factions in the civil war were likely to oppose whatever force offered stability;
- Therefore it seemed obvious that the Marines were about to take a major hit.
Given that the largest contingent of peacekeepers in Beirut was the Marine Corps and I was a Marine, I needed to take this back-alley "intelligence analysis" to the American chain of command in Lebanon. I passed along our concerns to the senior U.S. officer in local United Nations activities and then went to visit international players trying to do the right thing for Lebanon.
On 22 October 1983, I wrapped an information session at Beirut Airport. Tempted to spend the night, chewing on the Marine Corps gossip I sorely missed in my UN job (I was the only American military officer in UNIFIL's 7,000-man, armed peacekeeping brigade), I was mission complete—so I headed south to the Israeli-Lebanese border. The next morning, a UN observer brought me the terrible, unbelievable news: "Marines in Beirut got hit this morning; at least 60 are dead."
I told him that was impossible: "I was there yesterday; it was quiet as a church. It's gotta be a mistake."
The Bad News
Over the next 24 hours the facts poured in. The total number of American servicemen killed was 241—220 of them Marines. My amateur "intelligence" contribution, while correct, had been worthless, being self-generated and coming amid the daily flood of other information. My warning had been but a drop in the bucket.
Hours later I was back in Beirut, running light interference between UNIFIL and other organizations and skirting heavy firefights while planning for expanded UN peacekeeping operations throughout the country. Such plans would never materialize.
Throughout early 1984 Stalingrad-intensity artillery barrages continued to drop hundreds of rounds per hour onto Beirut. Most Marines had been pulled out of Lebanon by about March 1984. Those assigned to UN missions left over time. Eventually, even the U.S. Embassy Marine Guard was replaced with local security units. Other Western nations withdrew their forces. During a private dinner with some of northern Israel's prominent citizens, a senior UN officer said, "The United States placed a bet on Lebanon; it equaled a U.S. Marine Corps battalion; they lost the bet; that's all they're prepared to put on the table." The day before I left in June 1984, 115 people were killed in Beirut. Reportedly, only one was a Soldier, the rest civilians. This was one of the darkest hours of Lebanon's civil war.
During my debrief after I returned to the States, I told fellow officers, "There's no reason a Marine couldn't be chief of any United Nations mission in the Mideast. If, however, we keep having Marine observers travel unarmed in Lebanon, we'll eventually get one killed." Years later, in the aftermath of the 1988 kidnapping, torture, and murder of Colonel William "Rich" Higgins during his service as the senior military observer in Lebanon with the United States Military Observer Group, UN Truce Supervision Organization, it was no comfort to me to have been right on both calls.
Lebanon in 2007
I returned to Beirut on 24 October 2007 with a team designing comprehensive training for Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). Remarkably, by the Marine Corps' birthday on 10 November, I had roamed Lebanon's interior, sometimes alone, unarmed, unafraid (and frankly unnoticed) along the old Green Line that historically separated Christian and Muslim Beirut. I drove through the mountain passes that had sheltered adversaries during the civil war and toured the Bekaa Valley, once home to terrorist training camps. Returning now, the atmosphere was truly surreal.
Despite the political power vacuum left by President Emile Lahoud's departure in November 2007, Lebanon remained peaceful the following weekend. LAF troops increased their presence throughout Beirut, casually observant and bored. Like all troops I saw throughout Lebanon they were well-uniformed, carried clean weapons, and were led by officers exhibiting fine leadership.
People thronged the streets observing their normal routines. The shopping malls and fast-food restaurants were busy. Construction sites bustled, and public utilities were fully functional. Military officers and their families came to the LAF's Jounieh Military Club House to relax, as usual. There were no visible signs of unease.
Tensions Linger
This isn't to say that political problems do not persist in Lebanon; not all are internal. Lebanon's eastern neighbor, Syria, continues to exert a powerful influence over the region. Days after my last departure, Brigadier General Francois Hajj, who was reportedly a contender to head the LAF, was killed by a car bomb. Syria was widely considered a suspect. A subsequent bombing killed an officer investigating the death in 2005 of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. (Hariri's death also is suspected by many to be the work of Syria.)
Since then, other prominent politians, some loyal to Hariri, have been assassinated. Another car bomb attack, on 15 January 2008, targeted American Embassy employees; no Americans were killed in the bombing. A stalemate over producing Lebanon's next president ended when General Michel Slieman, former chief of LAF, was elected president in May 2008.
To the south, Israel, with which Lebanon remains officially at war, exerts influence disproportionate to its size over regional and global politics. Israel will closely monitor any efforts by countries (especially the United States) to develop stronger ties with Lebanon.
Iran presumably continues to dabble in Lebanon's politics through overt support for Hezbollah and covert rearming of that party's militia. Iran called for a boycott of the November 2007 peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland and did not attend.
Internally, Hezbollah, founded in the 1980s and which the U.S. has labeled a terrorist organization, has increased its power significantly. Its local reputation was enhanced in 2007 when its militia fought the IDF to a standstill in south Lebanon and later distributed cash to southern Lebanese affected by the war's destruction. Hezbollah's members in Parliament will remain prominent players for the immediate future.
During the spring of 2008, Hezbollah militia temporarily seized control of major portions of Beirut in response to government plans to shut down its independent communications network. The militia later collaborated with the LAF to return territory to government control. A shift in demographics (diluting relative numbers of Christians in a more Muslim society) hasn't been accurately calculated by census since 1932, but this will affect Parliament's make-up over the long haul. How long the current confessional arrangement (with a Christian as president, Sunni Muslim as prime minister, and Shiite as head of Parliament) will last is anybody's guess.
Meanwhile, between 350,000 and 500,000 Palestinians endure crowded poverty in camps throughout Lebanon. They've fled former homelands in what is now Israel, been forced out of Jordan, or been born inside the camps. They have few rights and rely in part on UN stewardship. Lebanon is unlikely to permit Palestinians citizenship, given the resulting shift in voting demographics. There is no solution in sight. Three generations of Palestinians with nothing to lose live in the Levant.
It is against this backdrop that Lebanon is trying to re-assert itself as an independent nation and functioning democracy. Remarkably, there is progress.
Toward Stability
Following Hariri's assassination, overwhelming Lebanese protests and the corresponding pressure of world opinion forced Syria to withdraw its longstanding occupation troops. Hariri's legacy remains evident in Beirut's renaissance and the magnificent mosque he built (now his tomb) in his hometown of Sidon, a southern coastal city bustling with new development.In 2007 LAF troops moved south of the Litani River, creating the first credible Lebanese government presence in south Lebanon in 30 years. LAF units collaborate daily with UNIFIL, which has roughly doubled in size since 1983. The LAF's relations with UNIFIL and local Lebanese citizenry appear solid.
Last year also saw the LAF engage heavily-fortified militants in the bitterly-fought 106-day battle of Nahr El Bard, a refugee camp north of Tripoli, on the rugged Mediterranean coast. LAF troops cleared the camp of hardcore urban fighters. It was the first time in a generation that the LAF had fought as a cohesive national force against a common enemy.
In October 2007 President George W. Bush hosted Hariri's son Sa'ad (a member of Lebanon's parliament and his father's political heir) in Washington. During the same trip Sa'ad also met with 30 other U.S. lawmakers. Subsequently the U.S. contributed $60 million to Lebanon's Internal Security Forces. A quarter century after leaving Lebanon, America was again placing modest bets on the Levant.
Beirut—once known as the "Paris of the Middle East" and later as its "tinderbox"—in 2007 appeared to be as cosmopolitan as any city I've ever visited. Global brands competed with local and regional for billboard and shelf space. Some 50,000 U.S. citizens were living in the country. Lebanon, which for millennia was a vital trade crossroads, hummed with vitality. Lebanese business leaders, among them well-educated and extremely well-financed ex-patriots, again envision attracting foreign capital to the country.
October Ghosts
Did the U.S. Marine Corps participation make any contribution to Lebanon's progress? After all, we have held some sort of presence there since 1948 (when the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization's first commander was a Marine general), through armed intervention in 1958, the Marine and UN presences during the 1980s, to a modest training contribution in 2007. The honest answer is—probably.
During visits to various LAF units last year, I was treated to incomparable Lebanese hospitality. When talk inevitably turned to the days of 1982-84, at some point an LAF colonel or general—grown gray in service to his country, and retaining positive memories of his service with the Marines—would retrieve a faded, framed parchment from his wall, with the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor at the top and including a signature at the bottom, bearing the names Colonel James Mead or Colonel Tim Geraghty. As we talked I learned where my counterparts had trained and with whom they'd fought while in Lebanon.
Everything in the Mideast is based on relationships. Many officers with whom I visited consider a stronger interaction with the US military establishment a key to the LAF's development.
A stable, democratic Lebanon will be one that formulates its own national strategy, backed by armed forces capable of guaranteeing internal and border security, thus rendering private militia irrelevant. Given infrastructure growth, better stability, increasing prosperity, and budding (though still struggling) cohesiveness of principal factions, a decade of peace and quiet could have the country on its way as a regionally important player.
The calendar has refreshed 25 times since I got the mission to "do exactly as I pleased." For most Americans, the Marine Corps' 1982-84 intervention in Lebanon is as obscure a memory as the 1965 amphibious landings in Danang. For a few, however—retired, aging in our nation's service, nagged by old wounds, once-eager warriors, and reluctant heroes—the month of October is haunted by ghosts still on duty in Beirut. Last year it was an honor to commemorate our birthday standing near their memorial and remembering their sacrifice, but without forgetting the horror that befell them, the day after Beirut was quiet as a church.